This chapter is chronologically very explicit. Two black clothed
men pick-up K. who is also dressed in black. Like in Chapter 1 at
9 a.m. the warders arrest K. at the same time. This incident has
occurred exactly after one year of the first one, in fact the
evening of the protagonist’s birthday.

The court acts according to the will of K. K.’s death is the issue.
He has to die. His death is inevitable. There are two executioners
who are appointed to kill K. They treat K. with amazing courtesy
that is much more than the waders. This is so because their grip
on K. is in such a "...unity which would have brought all three
down together had one of them been knocked over." This
welcomes the interpretation of these two men along with the
warders, as being parts of K.’s "self" or his "ego." The warders
because in the first chapter these two warders were described by
one of them as being closer to K. than any other people in the
world.

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The trio then move towards the railway tracks - implying on the
possibility of suicide - and thus evoking traces of ‘suicide’ in
Kafka’s "The Judgement", where the death of the protagonist
liberates him. In ‘The Trial’ K. contrarily does not choose to die.
From the very beginning K.’s will to life is feeble, and his
inability to commit suicide is only a distorted version of it. K.
misses another opportunity to kill himself when the arrangements
for his death are being made at the quarry. " K. now knew
exactly that it would have been his duty to grab the knife passing
back and forth over his head and plunge it into his own breast."
K. blames fate for not having enough will power to commit the
deed.

It is only when K. considers for the last time the option of killing
himself that Fräulein Bürstner appears. She comes as if in a
dream and triggers in K. a thought process. K. realizes that he
had faltered in his understanding of the significance of her advice
when she had rebuked him to depend upon himself. He realizes
that it was meaningless to continue fighting death. The novel
ends with the death of the protagonist Joseph K. The last lines
are " ‘Like a dog!’ It was as if the shame of it must outlive
him,..."